Their story
by GrecianHeart
Summary: AU. Jasper, his twin sister Josephine and Alice have joined the Cullens. Why are Jasper and Jo so aloof? What is it they're ashamed of? Either way, they're going to have to spill.
1. Chapter 1

Emmett's POV

I stared out the window at two of my new siblings, Jasper and Josephine Cullen. They were sitting on the riverbank, staring at the sunset, saying nothing. The faint glow from the sun set off the collages of blonde in their hair, making it a shimmering gold. I had to admit, they managed to look...beautiful.

I find their relationship rather strange, really. They showed up with a physic who said she saw us and knew one day we'd be family. Of course, we were happy to have them. The physic was named Alice.

She was Jasper's mate. Simple enough. But Jo was Jasper's twin sister. They were born together in their human life and somehow became immortal together. We didn't know much about them, apart from the fact that they were twins, 150 years old each and they were both gifted. They had the exact same gift. Apparently they had been through a lot, so they were extremely shy, reserved, quiet...and lethal. I was curious about their scars and if it were anyone else, I would have forced it out of them by now, but they were crazy protective of each other and they didn't like to speak, least of all about their scars, and I rather value my arm. I'd asked Alice once, thinking Jasper would have told her, but she said Jasper and Jo would tell us when they were ready. And that if she told us what Jasper told her, Jo would rip her arm off. Lethal.

I smiled as Jasper said something to Jo in a foreign language and Jo began to giggle uncontrollably. They were also very fond of each other.

They suddenly got up and began to walk towards the house. They walked through the door. They were white even by vampire standards. Jasper was taller than Jo, with wavy blonde hair. Jo hair was the exact same color, longer and more tightly curled than Jasper and they both had wide eyes, the customary topaz in our family. They looked so alike it was startling in twins of different gender. And they were inseparable. I vaguely wondered how Alice could stand it. But she was already pretty close to Edward and I never heard Jasper complain.

They glanced at me as they entered. Their faces still startled me. They always kept their faces so cold and completely expressionless. They didn't say anything to me. They just walked upstairs to Jo's room. I heard the door click shut. Then I sighed in frustration. I didn't understand their shyness. Though I supposed it had something to do with their past.

They didn't know it, but we were going to find out everything tonight.

Rosalie's POV

I was feeling very pleased. Very, very pleased. We had spoken to Carlisle about Jasper and Jo's aloofness and he decided that if we wanted to know about them, we could always ask. And everyone would be there to listen without interruption. Poor Emmett.

It was six pm on a Friday evening. I could tell Esme was nervous, Carlisle was curious, Edward was excited, Alice was uncomfortable, Emmett was excited as Edward. I as always, was plain bored.

Jo and Jasper were out hunting. We had been sitting round the fireplace for about one and a half hours. I was beginning to feel impatient. Where were they?

It appeared Alice was thinking along the same lines. She blanked out, then her eyes refocused.

"They'll be here in 45 seconds" she said. Then she sighed." I really wish you wouldn't do this. They won't enjoy talking about it."

Carlisle answered her. "But Ali, we need to know. That's what a family is for. They can't just lock themselves in whatever's bothering them. We could help."

"They've told me. No one can help."

At this point we could hear them running to the back door. They walked in side by side, and I knew they could feel the tension in the room. Apparently they weren't going to acknowledge it. They were about to dash up the stairs when Carlisle stopped them.

He smiled." Have fun on your trip?" They didn't look at all happy with whatever they could sense. They exchanged a look, sighed and plopped in front of the fire.

"What do you want?"

As they hardly ever spoke, their voices surprised me. Jasper had a deep, resonant voice.

Jo's voice was higher, not as deep. But it had the same clear, ringing quality to it. When they spoke in harmony, it sounded like music.

"We want to know...what happened. Your past." They didn't look at Carlisle. They stared at the fire.

"Why does it bother you?" Only Jo spoke now. Jasper was quiet. He continued to gaze at the fire. The effect it had on his face was mesmerizing.

"We have to know." Esme spoke with affection clear in her voice. "We're family now." She looked at them expectantly. When they didn't respond, she spoke again. "Aren't we?"

Their eyes remained locked on the fire, their faces blank, their mouths sealed shut.

"We know it's hard for you to talk about, but we need to know. What happened to you?"

They were suddenly resigned. "What do you want to know?"

Carlisle smiled, glad we had gotten somewhere. "Everything as far back as you remember."

The twins sighed, looked round the room, and began.


	2. Chapter 2

Rosalie's POV

"My mother had always told us that we were born into magic. We used to take it as some sort of joke." Jo looked down. "We didn't know how true it was."

"My twin and I were born in Texas in 1843." Jasper began. "We were told that our mother was in agony for 34 hours because we were reluctant to come out." He abruptly grinned at Jo. She grinned back.

"We had purplish eyes when we were born- like an amethyst. Our mother said they would turn purplish blue and would fleck with gold later, like hers. It happened when we were about 6. We were so excited when we woke up and our eyes were flecked with gold. They were beautiful. Those were one of the things I regretted leaving behind.

"Our mother was strangely excited too. We didn't understand it. Then it started." Jasper dropped off and Jo continued.

"We would get upset or angry and pencils would roll if the table and cups would fall to the floor. The gold flecks would overtake our eyes and our irises would be ringed with black. It was very eerie. We always kept to ourselves-we weren't very sociable. Naturally people watched us. We didn't mind. We just drew closer to each other."

"It began to ascend. When someone was stupid enough to cross us, something bad would happen to the person. We had a few friends, despite our coldness. Whenever we thought of them, we would be told their family had gotten a lot of money from a dead relative or won a hopeless court case. We just blew it all of. Coincidences. Uncommon ones, but we didn't bother ourselves about it any further.

"Then one day it blew up."

Jasper continued where Jo stopped.

"A particularly devoted hater, William Sullivan, decided it would be funny to cause some trouble. We loved animals, see, and spent more time with our horses, dogs and birds then anything else. We became livid when anyone upset them. Rather silly, but we couldn't help it." He paused, cocked his head, then went on. "We felt as tied to them as we did to each other. Whatever it was that went through his head, I don't know, but he thought he would throw stones at darling Clover, our spaniel. He broke her leg. Immediately the bone snapped, we just...knew our dog was hurt. And we weren't happy at all."

My head automatically turned to Jo. I'd gotten used to their turn by turn format of speaking. That displeased me for a reason. I shook my head as if to clear my thoughts as she began to speak.

"Once he realized he'd hurt our dog, he ran away. I felt angry. Livid. Murderous rage racked my body. I could barely stand due to it. A small part of my mind registered that we were overreacting over a broken bone, but it was overshadowed by the much larger part that wanted to make William pay dearly. All of a sudden, I felt like I could do anything. I looked at my twin, and saw his eyes were gold, ringed with black. I knew mine were the same way. A rational part said this shouldn't be possible, but I felt like I was flying. In my minds eye, I was watching William from above. He was nearing a cliff. Without descending, I reached out...and pushed him over."


	3. Chapter 3

Edward's POV

I could see in their minds, with surprising clarity, the memory of what they did. I was appalled. I was so appalled that even with my vampiric mind and it's huge capacity, I couldn't bring myself to be surprised at their perfect recollection of the event. I tried to put my emotions under lock and key, but I couldn't quite manage it. All I could think about was what a horrible death that boy must have had. What monsters they must have been, even human. They had been very careful with their thoughts around me when they were asked anything relating in the slightest about their past. What were they capable of as glorious, powerful, undoubtably monstrous immortals?

They flashed a wry grin each in my direction, alerted by my emotions at what was going through my head. "Yes, it is horrifying, isn't it? I vaguely thought that we should have been disgusted with ourselves at what we did, but we weren't thinking clearly." Jasper was the one speaking. "We didn't understand it, not to talk of being guilty. We got back to the house - not thinking of why we were hovering above it.

"When we felt our feet hit the ground, our mother came out of the house. She looked us up and down and we knew she knew what we had done." He looked down. "That's when the gravity of what we did hit.

"The red haze ringing our vision finally cleared. We finally understood what we had done. We wished we hadn't. That was it, though. We just wished we hadn't. We didn't feel sick, we didn't feel shaky, we didn't even feel sorry. We just wished we hadn't done it. We wouldn't have changed it for anything, though."

Jo went on. "Our mother took us inside and began to explain. Things that would sound impossible, but somehow, we had always known we weren't like the children who had watched us so carefully, or the few friends we had, or the boy we had killed.

She told us our ancestry, where we came from, what we were made for, who we were. We were sorcerers."

Jasper took over. "She explained we had to move, immediately too. So we took everything we had and we left where we lived.

"The activation of our powers made us even more alluring to the humans. We weren't perfect as we were when we awoke, but we were heartbreakingly beautiful. Deathly pale, color on our cheeks, freckles sprinkled over our noses, and our eyes. We couldn't avoid attention, not now.

"We moved to another sleepy little town, where the sun hardly ever showed up - I really can't be bothered to try remembering the name - and we pretended like no boy had ever died at our hands.

"We had a beautiful house. It was red brick with creeping ivy everywhere. There was the entrance hall, five huge bedrooms, a large study, a large kitchen, a dining room, a playroom, a music room, a dance room and huge grounds, with cottages dotted about them. Stables for our horses, a lovely place for our birds, and our dog could sleep in the open airy kitchen. It was the sort of place that made you smile just to look at it. Mother kept it rather plain, though. When we asked her about it, she would giggle her silvery little giggle and say 'All in good time!' We loved her laugh. It sounded musical.

"Our mother just told us that we needed to learn. She had thousands of books she brought along, refusing to leave a single one behind. She told us that as sorcerers, there were so many things we were to learn. Sciences, the arts, nature, and of course, the magical world. We weren't doing anything practical. We were just to read. Our mental growth outstripped our physical growth, so we were able to absorb a lot in a short time."

"Then we began to put what we'd learnt into practice." The twins smiled softly. "Those were the happiest three years of our lives-our two lives. We had read on so much- the natural world, music, literature, dance,painting, sculpting- so she bought us instruments, art materials,-the hugest shopping trip of our lives."

"We were good at just about everything, so Mother began to show us the practical side of what we'd learnt. We learnt how to paint, we learnt how to care for animals, the difference between charcoal drawings and shadow drawings, how to play just about every instrument known to man-Mother said we played harp like angels- and we learnt to dance."

"We learnt fine art first. Once we'd perfected painting, we began to decorate our home. We finally understood why Mother left it so plain." They smiled wistfully. "She wanted us to decorate it together."

Jo smiled softly, then spoke. "We loved everything Mother taught us, but after a while, we began to develop our own nuances. Mother had always loved fine art. We were more into liberal art. Music, literature, history, mythology, dance. Even within that frame, I was different from Jasper. I felt happiest when playing then I felt at any other time. And Jasper loved to dance." She must have felt my shock because she threw a wry glance at me.

"Yes, he loved to dance. He was better than I was." She smiled at him.

He smiled back. "I never lived it down."

She continued. "Every day we would do a painting, play an instrument or care for our animals. Every weekend we would go into the garden, I'd take my violin, Mother would take her canvas and paints and Jasper would play the harp or dance to what I played. The thought of the scene we must have made always caused us to laugh. We must have looked the quintessential elite renaissance family. But we we're perfectly happy. I couldn't imagine a better life."

"It was this way for two years. Then mother thought we'd had enough studying. She made us our first wands." Jo kept her eyes locked on the fire.

"Jasper's was birch wood, with a unicorn hair in it, goodness knows where mother got it, and mine was ash wood, with another unicorn hair. We could hardly keep still. Of course once she handed mine to me, the vase in front of me shattered." She grinned. "Jasper did a lot worse with his wand."

"At least I didn't do damage within the first 3 seconds." He retorted.

"No, of course not." She said, tongue in cheek. "You did much more damage than I did in the first 8 seconds."

He scowled." We were saying something before you dragged me into this banter."

Jo's grin widened even more. "This isn't a banter. It's an all out squabble." She cocked her head, thought for a bit, then wore a grin to rival the Cheshire Cat's. "And you lost."

The scowl disappeared, replaced by a grin to match Jo's. "Shut up." All the while keeping their eyes locked on the fire.

Before she could say anything, Jasper prattled on. "Mother called us one day, marched over to the arched window in our entrance hall and did the strangest thing I could imagine; she threw a book at it and brought it crashing down. I remember thinking she had gone mad. But then she said she wanted us to make a stained glass window. She didn't tell us what it was supposed to look like, though. She said we'd figure it out. So we began our stained glass window. She made it with us, directing us on where to put the pieces of glass in the steel frame she'd created. We were very curious, wondering what it was. We didn't notice until I was holding the last piece. Jo and I put it in together. Then Mother brought it to life. It was a depiction of our family, smiling and waving down at us, accurate to each freckle, right down to the flecks of gold in all our eyes. It was our birthday gift." They smiled at the fire. "Mother protected everything we owned with an enchantment, but we did the protection enchantment ourselves. It's still there, along with everything in the house, perfectly preserved, unable to be stolen. Everything down to the gold glass pieces would still be there. The protection spells are eternal."

"We were touched. We loved that stained glass window more than anything-except each other of course."

He stopped, than sighed. "Our lives were perfect. Until we were 17. Our regular schedule. But one little hitch caused our picture perfect lives to come crashing down, just like the first arched window Mother broke."


	4. Chapter 4

**So, so sorry for being away this long. I have a major exam coming up, and I had to beg and beg my parents to give me my iPad to update. When that failed, I pinched it. So sorry if it's a little short.**

Esme's POV

The twins, in the short time I had known them, had always shown a self contained side. Whenever I spoke to them, asking how they were, they would give me a patronizing look, saying, "Don't bother with courtesy, we know you don't care, it doesn't matter, my twin is with me". Though powerful, negative emotions caused them pain sometimes, they would never admit it. They were so caught in their habit of not showing weakness that they never let us in. They believed no one could care about them. They failed to notice that I really did care about them.

Now seeing them look so vulnerable at their memories, the urge of a mother to see her children smile overtook me. I knew they wouldn't like it, but I suddenly saw through the facade they wore to the pain within. The years seemed to fall away, and I saw nothing but two scared little children, wondering why their fantasy had gone wrong.

Jo sucked in a breath. It didn't work. Her entire frame began to shudder, but she allowed no movement on her face. It was blank. She was trying not to admit, even to herself, the pain she felt on her memory. Jasper wrapped an arm around her and she became still.

Jasper spoke. "There was absolutely nothing to suggest that our lives would crumple. It was like any other day. Jo and I were trying to finish this composition when we heard something shatter. We ran to the study. When we got there, we saw the crystal ball - or what used to be the crystal ball - on the floor, the shards as fine as sand, all over the place. Mother was standing over what seemed to be the point where she dropped it. When we came into the room, she looked up.

"I'd never seem mother wear such an expression before. It was blank, empty. She was paler than usual, but that wasn't what worried me. It was her eyes, like a light had gone off somewhere inside her. Her eyes had no life.

"We rushed to her, asked her what was wrong. Her face suddenly filled with despair and she crumpled on the floor. Mother was a talented diviner. But she refused to tell us what she saw. Then she left the room."

"She didn't come out for two days." Jo said. "When she finally did come out, she told us what she had decided. She wasn't going to teach us divination. That was the only branch of magic we hadn't gotten to yet. It wouldn't have bothered us so much if she at least told us why. We begged her again to tell us what she saw. She shook her head.

"Mother didn't trust us any more. That realization shook me more than anything remember. She wouldn't tell us what it was that made her so sad. She wouldn't let us help. She told us it was for the best, that everything would work out. But she wouldn't try to change what she had seen would happen."

I turned to Jasper. He clenched his jaw, unclenched it and spoke. "We drifted apart after that. The house we loved felt bland and cold. Mother didn't smile or laugh any more. She hardly spoke to us. We didn't know what to do about it. Perhaps there really was nothing we could do. The thought depressed us. Our life stone got weaker every day."

"Life stone?" I glared. What part of "do not interrupt" did Emmett not understand?

"When a sorcerer is born, the aura of the individual is embodied into something that best represents it. Ironically, the stone our aura created was a lapis lazuli." Jo pasted a sickly smile on her face. "It is the source of energy for the owner. With the stone, you can do anything to the individual it represents. But for us there was only one stone. Twins are a curse in the wizarding world. The energy in one stone simply isn't enough to support two people. Most of the time twins are able to share the energy safely. But no matter how much they wish it wouldn't happen, twins will fight. And once their aura is tainted by anger, spite, jealousy, they get sicker and sicker until they die. Because once their aura is stained against each other, the energy exchange halts. They can't survive like that."

"We were amicable most of the time." It seemed Jasper was trying to convince himself of what he was saying. "Even during the whole affair, we loved each other as much as we always had. But it didn't seem to be enough as our aura got weaker every day. And so did we."

* * *

"I was walking through the grounds. I hardly ever did that since our little fight. It had been over two years now. Two years of Mother's silence. Two years of staring at each other over the piano. Two years of pain and despair. I looked back at the house from where I was standing. I couldn't see auras, but the one the house held was clear. It was grey and heavy as a rain cloud. There was no joy in that house anymore.

"The house was killing me. I had finally realized it. I needed to get away. As far away as I could." Jasper's face crumpled. "If only I had known exactly what Mother saw! I wouldn't have left. I would have borne it all. I didn't know my running away was exactly what led to Mother's despair. I ran."

"The minute Jasper left, I knew." Jo sighed. "I couldn't do anything about it, though. Jasper had left me. The feeling of helplessness at that moment was so strong it nearly knocked me down. But of course I couldn't go and tell him to come back. He wouldn't do that for me. He didn't do things like that for me any more.

"I felt a jolt of pain. Not mine. Jasper! He needed me now. For the last two years, we hadn't been the best of friends. Things had changed between us. But I wouldn't let him feel pain. I had to find him. Perhaps if I found him, we could drag through this together.

"I went to tell Mother what I knew. I expected her to come with me, but she gave me a look so lost, it broke my heart. I felt lost too, but we couldn't afford it now. We had to find Jasper! But she shook her head.

"The force of the truth hit me.

"She knew.

"She knew what had happened to Jasper.

"She knew when he left.

"She knew where he was.

"She knew that the nightmare we had lived for the past few years would happen.

"But she didn't try to stop it.

"I had never felt so betrayed in my life. Why did she let this happen? Why didn't she try and stop this? Why did she let us feel so much pain? I shouted at her, determined to cause her as much pain as I felt.

Her eyes were blank and she shook her head.

"All my anger fell away. There was only the pain. If only we had known. If only Mother had told us. We could have worked through this. But the damage was done. Mother obviously wasn't going to try and find him. But I wasn't going to stay. I had to find my brother. But I couldn't come back home. I understood why Jasper had left. It was just too much to see the place where we were so happy like this.

"There was no love there any more.

"I walked out the door to the grounds. What was going to happen to this house? Would this nightmare we were in ever end? I looked at the house I had once loved. I looked at Mother. Her face remained unmoving. I couldn't stand it any more.

"I had to go. Maybe if I ran fast enough, the feelings that threatened to crush me would go away. Maybe they would never come back.

"I looked back once more, at Mother. A lone tear rolled down her cheek.

"I ran."


End file.
